Putin aims to restore Russia’s leading place in the world. If we are surprised by his actions it is we who are fools.

By David T. Twining

What can we expect of Vladimir Putin in the Ukraine in the days ahead?

Another plebiscite, popular mandate or unanimous proclamation? Fresh from the success of the Olympics Putin believed this modern day Potemkin village would project his positive image throughout the world. After all, George W. Bush looked into his eyes and saw someone he could work with.

Had Bush looked further he would have seen a committed Leninist intent on restoring Russia’s prestige and power. Fundamental to Marxism-Leninism is power: its quest, maintenance and defense.

Machiavelli addressed this issue long ago, saying it is better to be feared than loved. Power is intoxicating; you either have it or you don’t; when you have it you can’t let it go. It is the keystone of the Marxist-Leninist existence and currency of international relations. If you take your eye off this reality you will go the way of Yeltsin and Gorbachev.

As a KGB career officer Putin knows the sword and shield that protects the state is based on power. It is to be defended at all costs, and those who help—the modern nomenklatura—are rewarded accordingly.

Restoring the near abroad is central to Moscow’s ambitions. This is not an easy task because it depends on and expects conflict. The thesis and antithesis, the unity and attraction of opposites, are key ingredients of Putin’s view of progress in world affairs. Does everyone in today’s Russia think that way?

Not likely, but this is the prism through which those in control see the world. With conflict a normal and inevitable condition, when Putin reads his daily intelligence brief it is conflict abroad--chaos in war-torn Iraq, subterfuge by Iran, and unrest in central Africa--that makes his day. After all, he expects the dialectic to roll on.

Of course Putin’s job is not that simple: economic oligarchs to watch, restive peoples within his own borders, and uncertain allies like Byelorus intent on institutionalizing backwardness. But the zero-sum game abroad preoccupies him.

When Putin judges the correlation of global forces are in his favor he acts. As Lenin said when preparing for the 1917 Revolution, “the worse the better.”

To extend control to areas occupied by ethnic Russians power is necessary and conflict--military, political/diplomatic, and economic—advances Russia’s dialectic to a new stage or synthesis. Georgia discovered this reality in 2008 and now Ukraine in 2014.

For the Baltic States there is much to be concerned about. As I write this from Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands anxious eyes fear a Russian presence, any presence, that may give Putin the pretext to assert sovereignty.

With power a central theme, why are we surprised by Putin’s move in the Crimea? He has already stolen our words: freedom, democracy, self-determination, legitimacy. In a centrally controlled state headed by an authoritarian elite the meanings are different. But he is like us, we say, we can work with this man. Alexander Pushkin said Russia is neither European not Asian, it is Eurasian.

Different thought patterns, values and cultural precepts are at work. Russians do not think as we do in the West.

We cannot mirror-image their values and beliefs as our own. Lacking Western liberal thought from an Enlightenment that bypassed Russia, for those trained in state schools and universities, including the KGB (now FSB) Academy, thinking like a Westerner is beyond their frame of reference.

Is the West angry over developments in Ukraine? So what? A new synthesis has been achieved.

Putin aims to restore Russia’s leading place in the world. If we are surprised by his actions it is we who are fools, not those whose worldview explains and justifies everything.